Our Woman in Moscow

Set against the early Cold War, the novel interweaves three narrative perspectives across multiple timelines to tell the story of twin sisters Ruth and Iris, whose lives are upended by espionage, betrayal, and an audacious rescue mission behind the Iron Curtain.

The story opens in August 1952 with Ruth aboard a military aircraft flying over northern Europe to help evacuate an injured American, FBI agent C. Sumner Fox, a former Yale football star. She recalls how Iris saved her life at age eight by calling an ambulance during an appendicitis crisis and frames the summer's events as repayment for that debt.

In May 1951, Lyudmila Ivanova, a veteran KGB officer in Moscow shaped by decades of Soviet repression, interrogates recently arrived British defector Guy Burgess about an intercepted communication to a contact code-named ASCOT in London. She theorizes that ASCOT represents a renegade Western counterspy operation aimed at exposing Soviet moles.

In June 1952, FBI agent Sumner Fox visits Ruth at the Hudson Modeling Agency in New York, where she serves as de facto manager. He tells her that her sister's diplomat husband, Sasha Digby, vanished with Iris and their children from London in November 1948. Ruth claims she has not communicated with Iris in 12 years, concealing a postcard she recently received from Moscow. That evening, she finds an airmail letter from Iris requesting help with an upcoming delivery. Ruth's Aunt Vivian notes that the postcard does not sound like Iris, deepening Ruth's suspicion that her sister is in distress.

The novel reaches back to Rome in 1940, where Iris, a shy, art-loving young woman, meets Sasha at the Villa Borghese gallery. Sasha is a tall, golden-haired American diplomat working alongside Iris's brother, Harry, at the US embassy. After he rescues Iris from a motorcycle accident and visits her daily in the hospital, they begin a secret affair. During a weekend at a borrowed villa, Iris discovers photographs in Sasha's suitcase, and he confesses that he passes information to the Soviets, insisting he has never harmed the United States.

Meanwhile, Ruth has been intercepting Sasha's letters and phone calls to Iris, trying to shield her sister from a man she considers dangerous. When the deception is exposed, Iris confronts Ruth, reveals she is pregnant, and refuses to leave Italy. Ruth departs alone on the steamship SS Antigone, beginning their 12-year estrangement.

Back in 1952, Ruth calls Fox and confesses everything: She has Iris's postcard and letter, and Sasha confessed to spying for the Soviets during nights he and Ruth spent together after Iris's accident in Rome. Fox takes the documents and promises to protect Iris. Ruth flies to Rome to seek help from Orlovsky, a Russian émigré fashion designer and former lover. At his studio, she discovers that Orlovsky's contact is Fox himself, who has been orchestrating a long-planned extraction of the Digby family. Fox presents Ruth with a passport bearing the name Mrs. Sumner Fox: She will travel to Moscow posing as his wife, giving them legitimate cover to enter the Soviet Union under the pretext of helping Iris during her difficult pregnancy.

The 1948 London timeline reveals Iris's deteriorating marriage. Sasha's alcoholism worsens, and Iris discovers a miniature Minox spy camera and a hidden compartment in his desk. She confides in Philip Beauchamp, a scarred British intelligence veteran who becomes her close friend and, eventually, her lover. During a summer at Philip's estate, Honeysuckle Cottage in Dorset, Sasha drunkenly confesses that he slept with Ruth in Rome. When Sasha's Soviet handler, Nedda Fischer, is assassinated on the streets of London, Fox intercepts Iris and reveals the full scope of the investigation: Sasha's espionage has been identified, the Soviets are eliminating exposed agents, and Iris is the only person who can convince Sasha to cooperate with American intelligence.

In Moscow, Ruth and Fox arrive under constant KGB surveillance and are installed in a bugged suite at the National Hotel, where they stage convincing scenes as newlyweds. When they visit the Digby family, Ruth is struck by Sasha's apparent contentment and sobriety. She begins to suspect that Iris, not Sasha, is the driving force behind the extraction.

Iris goes into labor and undergoes an emergency cesarean section; her son Gregory is born healthy. Fox disappears to retrieve supplies from a prearranged hidden cache, including passports, a gun, and a disguise. Ruth discovers that the KGB has secretly searched Sasha's apartment, and Sasha has relapsed, leaving the Digbys' eldest son, 11-year-old Kip, to care for his siblings. Meanwhile, Lyudmila has Orlovsky's teenage daughter kidnapped and, through coercion, confirms Fox's identity as an intelligence operative.

Ruth bullies the Soviet officials into transferring Iris to a clinic near Riga, Latvia. Fox reveals to Ruth that after the war, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tasked him to work independently outside any agency to root out Soviet moles in Western intelligence. On the train, Ruth drugs the KGB handler's tea and slips off with Iris at the small Latvian town of Ogre. Fox arrives in a stolen KGB car with the Digby children and Sasha locked in the trunk. They drive toward the Baltic coast but are captured and brought to a military facility.

There, Lyudmila interrogates Sasha, who insists he was kidnapped. She presents evidence linking the operation to Honeysuckle Cottage and the code name ASCOT. Sasha recalls discovering a hidden radio receiver in his desk and is devastated by the implication: Iris has been the counterspy all along, conducting espionage under his nose for four years. He agrees to cooperate but possesses little useful intelligence because he never knew the details of his wife's operation.

Lyudmila's hand is forced by her daughter Marina, who attends the same school as the Digby children. Marina tracks the prisoners to the facility and shoots a guard trying to free them. The general warns that Marina's crime carries severe consequences. Lyudmila visits the badly injured Fox in his cell and makes him a proposition whose terms remain unrevealed. On the beach at twilight, she lines up the prisoners before armed guards and announces the penalty for treason is death. After a paralyzing silence, she adds: "or exile." Behind them, two men and a rowboat wait on the sand.

The group rows to a fishing trawler, where Philip Beauchamp hauls Iris aboard. Ruth grasps how the intelligence Iris gathered over four years in Moscow was smuggled out: It was hidden in Gregory's soiled diaper bag, invisible because no one would search a baby's diapers, and no one imagined a housewife could be the spy.

In the final chapter, Iris recovers at Honeysuckle Cottage. She reveals to Ruth that after Philip was shot, she volunteered to defect with Sasha and become the counterspy herself, arguing that her invisibility as a mother made her the perfect agent. Philip arrives with a telegram: Fox has been found alive in Berlin. Ruth races to meet the evacuation flight, while Philip assures Iris that Fox will live, because he has something to live for.